Want to know how to write compelling content like a online professional?  I found this document on ProBlogger.com.  One of the things I do for a living is help people with their SEO.  This document says it as well as any document I have read in the recent past.  Doing what Brian suggests will make you a pro.  In my experience having inbound links is the secret to the sauce.

How to Write Compelling Content

I was at Whole Foods yesterday and I noticed that the posted very large window logos of Facebook and Twitter right on their entrance doors. I was like wow! This social media thing is really now a train that has left the station. In today’s news on TechCrunch they reported that Google is about to drop half a Bil, or $500,000,000 on Yelp! Yelp does online reviews of businesses.

Just the other day I was massively late to the Google local search listings I just added my business on it. Not sure if I did it correctly because it is only 80% complete.

In this other post on TechCrunch:

“What if every store had a bar-code sticker on its window so that you could pull out your iPhone, wave it in front of the bar code and get all sorts of information about that business—the telephone number, photos, customer reviews? Starting on Monday, you’ll be able to do that at up to 190,000 local businesses throughout the U.S.”

“I ask what if: every company has personal information on me?” How will it be used? With the available data today it is possible to tell where almost anyone is via cell phone GPS. Sure it is good to know where your dog is but do we have to spy on our kids and the government spy on us? Just how transparent are we all going?

Def. of insurance according to Merriam-Webster

1 a : the business of insuring persons or property b : coverage by contract whereby one party undertakes to indemnify or guarantee another against loss by a specified contingency or peril c : the sum for which something is insured

2 : a means of guaranteeing protection or safety

In today’s world it means something completely different. It means “let’s make a deal, read the fine print” and it probably will NOT go in your favor. What I mean by this is there are so many contingencies, clauses, deductibles, terms and the list goes on and on. Do you remember when insurance meant insurance? You bought a policy, weather it was auto, life, home, fire, flood, travel and if something happened you were “insured.” You got a check for full value, less a small deductible.

Do you think it is time to change the name to “financial services?” So if you go buy a health insurance policy you now have to say, I’m going to buy a “financial services policy for my health.” Because if you have a preexisting condition you might not be covered. Because you could be paying a $5,000 deductible. Let me ask, what kind of “insurance is that?” In my opinion that is a sorry ass bill you have to pay all the while you and or your employer coughs up some dough every month to keep you showing up on a regular basis, am I wrong?

So I think it is time for the dictionaries to either update their definitions and meanings or for the insurance companies to actually change their names and be renamed financial services companies. Then we would see competition especially if the gold standard is to be “an insurance company.” This is all a bit simplistic, but I’m sure there are some lawmakers who can craft some language to make it work.

Now in the insurance companies defense, they have 2 huge forces working against them: Lawyers and Fraud. Both are formidable foes, but I’d like to see their names changed.

I could not help but respond to this travel article about Marriott. As they acquire new independent hotel properties they feel that making them “appear” as independent but managed by Marriott headquarters is the route they have selected, are they not?

I have a lot of respect for Marriott. As a matter of fact I love staying in the Courtyard by Marriott. I trust they will be clean. I trust the will be friendly. I trust they will not over charge me. I think they have they best breakfasts, bar none. Now they are going to ditch the Marriott Brand Name for a new brand name, called the Autograph Collection, but only on these select independent hotels.

But last I checked brands = trust. So creating a new brand is a lot of work. My only question is did they do the right research or is this just a hunch by a few people? Time will tell, but I expect them to do well with the new brand.

When I saw this interview with Barack Obama I was very pleased to see our government finally recognizing the economic engine of our country, small businesses. As he says small businesses have created 65% of all new jobs in the past decade and a half. With numbers like these why hasn’t government been sending more money to small businesses? I was actually surprised that none of the presidential candidates would not interview us on the small business site My Success Gateway, considering we are focused on small businesses and small businesses have the impact on the economy that they do.

While Obama is allowing for $13 billion in new lending for small businesses (33,000 of them) and a health reform plan to offer better health insurance programs offering a tax credit all of these moves are very welcome! He is also urging congress to to increase the maximum size of SBA loans.

I met Jim Ayer, a wooden jigsaw puzzle maker of J.C Ayer & Co. a few months ago through my son who wanted to stop by his Wooden Jigsaw Puzzle work shop here in Marblehead, Massachusetts. (He has a big wooden jigsaw puzzle piece outside his business as his sign and that attracted us to his business). Since the internet is perfect for niche businesses, this is the perfect niche business and I happen to be an internet marketing consultant.

Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles are not like the typical cardboard puzzles. (Jim gave my son and I a “loaner puzzle,” actually Jim said that back during the depression that puzzle makers used to “rent puzzles” so families could entertain themselves). Here’s what I found out. First off this wooden jigsaw puzzle was very well made. Each piece fit exactly together. In some ways I was wondering how the heck could anyone cut a puzzle so well that there appeared to be no room for the knife? The other thing I noticed was this puzzle was about the size of a 9″ x 12″ envelope but it filled up an entire table when the pieces were not together. The point here is that the the pieces fit so well together they create the illusion that the size of the finished work is 2-3 times the actual. I guess I’ve had this happen more than once in my life where I thought I was going to be doing more work based on first glance at the project, has the same happened with you?

What else was really special about this puzzle is there are special pieces cut out. Jim especially likes the piece he calls “Jane Bond” the girl figure with the gun, see the photo. While many of the special cut out pieces were obvious some of them were not until the puzzle was actually together. For example, there was a three part figure that appeared to be a Radio City Rockette dancing girl. Again there were illusions in the puzzles as there are in life.

What was even more interesting was the fact that this puzzle offered “perspective,” on everything I’m doing and we are doing. As I was building it if I walked away from it for a while and got a glass of water and walked back I was able to put together several more pieces almost magically. As with work if we get too close to it for instance and don’t take a break from it like a vacation our thinking can be distorted or a better word is clouded. I could see the wooden jigsaw puzzle much more clearly if I stepped away.

What is also interesting about this wooden jigsaw puzzle maker is that he can put messages in the wooden jigsaw puzzles like “will you marry me,” or “thanks for the 25 years of great work” if someone is giving the puzzle as a corporate gift. These puzzles can the perfect gift for the person who is hard to buy for.

As in building a puzzle it parallels in life. There is no direct route, sure you can assemble some of the big pieces i.e. education, career, family etc. Each piece requires effort and focus and with some patience and care somehow they all fit together. I also had a little help from my friends Sean Bohan and Chris Peake.

This one guy, happened to be an immigrant and successful entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk was doing his usual in your face wake up call to all of the willing participants, live and online (CNN was broadcasting on CNN.com). For some reason I like his style, “in your face authentic.” The real deal. He tells it like it is. If you don’t want the “truth” read a boring business book. Vaynerchuk was going on about scaling customer service, or CRM. He said someone said to him, “awe that’s just customer service, what about all the other stuff?” Garys’ reply: “That is the stuff!” Here it is:

Go to the 8:00 minute section of this video to see what I am talking about. What is interesting about this customer service comment he uses an example earlier how the cable TV companies are bundling their packages and Gary is paying for Japan TV which is something he does not want. More on that in a minute.

So where I want to go is back to customer service. Getting to 1 call resolution is great, lowering call times is great, getting customer service satisfaction surveys about the call center agent is great, we’ve all optimized these things to the nth degree. I can tell you that 98% of my customer service calls have been excellent. Where companies totally miss the boat is on the corporate policies. I would dare a Fortune 500 company to give a survey on their corporate policy. i.e. “Mr. Customer how do you like our bundled TV services at GiantCableTV, did you enjoy the basket weaving program in Swahili last week?”

I’ll give you an example. A couple of weeks ago I was in the mood to test the cell phone market. I’m a “double diamond” client with Sprint, or they might call them a preferred client, I’ve been with them for 10+ years, I pay my bills on time and I have an “all you can eat package”….but I hate my Palm Treo. It is ready for the recycling bin. It drops calls, the browser no longer displays graphics and I don’t feel like waiting on hold for 20 minutes to tell Sprint of my problem. However I knew that I could get a sales person on the phone pretty quickly if I said “I need a new cell phone ASAP.”

I like Sprint. Their coverage where I live is excellent for the most part. (However they went into ROAM mode at Harvard at the Gravity Summit). I do know that Sprint will be one of the first carriers to come out with a 4G wireless network, and Boston is slated to be one of the first cities to get it. This will be nice to get my desktop computer, LAN and Wireless all on one network, one bill, bundled package that I would pay for.

When I called the Sprint sales person I asked them if I could get a top of the line Blackberry. He said yes. I asked him for a “deal.” he gave me a GREAT deal, I did have to work him. I’m pretty sure it was a Tour, for a grand total of $49.00. I said, great. I’ll drive over to the Sprint store and pick it up. He said “hold on” you can only get this if we ship this to you. You cannot get this phone in the store for $49.00. I said, “I want to touch and feel it.” I even went to the Sprint store to see if I could hondle the guy down. No dice. But I could have it in the store for about $200. I didn’t get it.

I like Apple, and I would love to own an iPhone. (Love is a strong word). I called the Google 411 directory and asked for Apple. Hi, my name is Jim, I need a new cell phone ASAP.” “Great Jim we have iPhones.” The price of the phone was around $200. Not bad for the king of the wireless road. Then I ask about the cost of their wireless plans. I could get just over 2 hours for ~$120 per month, from AT&T. Hmmmmm….this is where the real deal is and isn’t, the old continuity program. Plus there was extra for a certain amount of usage on the data plan. (Who really counts that stuff other than the carriers, and I asked if I could be sent an e-mail when I was about to reach my monthly threshold? No Dice.) Plus I have a friend in Marblehead who can’t use his iPhone because AT&T’s reception sucks out on the Neck. Hmmmmm I think I would rather talk on a Sprint phone than look cool with an iPhone that does not work and that is more expensive.

OK Jim, get to the freaking point. The point is, all of their company policies suck. And what is worse is they don’t know it, or they do know and don’t give a hoot. Because they don’t ask. They hide. So, while I really don’t need a new cell phone ASAP, I really want one ASAP but I’m going to wait until I find what works for my situation. I’m just a tiny example of millions of wireless clients….and the big guys have “no clue” as to what we really want because they are “faking it” when it comes to the only thing that matter to guys like me and Gary Vaynerchuk and the millions of masses. Seeking someone who cares.

To take it one step further. Intuit. I ordered Quickbooks 2009 from Amazon. I thought I was buying a brand new copy of Quickbooks 2009. I registered the software and low and behold it was registered to someone else. I have just bought a used copy of the software. Damn, I had some serious bookkeeping to do before a certain deadline. I called Intuit and asked them to give me a new registration #. No dice. “Not our policy.” (Creating a sequential registration number is like the government creating new money, it is just a few one’s and zero’s, and it is totally free).

So I finally called Amazon. They promptly realized the error and sent out a new copy and I sent them the old copy back. Intuit said they were going to call their legal department. I don’t care how the error occurred. But I’m now blabbing about stuff that should have been to bed a long time ago, just give me the damn registration number and let me be on my way. Again company policy getting in the way of CRM or customer service. As Vaynerchuk states in the Gravity Summit, big companies are going to fail in this new economy.

Not to mention any names but there was someone speaking at Gravity Summit who was from Intuit. I reluctantly told them the story. He said “we are listening” to our clients. I said if you are listening then have the president of your company call me, he has a little problem with his distributor selling used software as new with your brand name on it, I’d like to give him an earful. As of 9-21-09 right now the silence is deafening, no phone call.

So the point of all of this is go out and do a company policy survey and see how your customers like your company policies. Wouldn’t it be great if the government did the same thing? I know, I’m really reaching on that one!

subscribe to a newsletter

fill out a web form

call an 800#

walk into a store

purchase a product online

download a white paper

etc

There are many ways to get people to come to the company web sites. The best way in my humble opinion is through the press. media has the most creditability and bang for your buck. What media also does is give you links. As many of us know Google wants two things: 1) quality content 2) quality incoming links pointing to your site. An article on the New York Times Business Home Page gives you links and creditability and traffic.

Hiring a press agency or PR Firm can be expensive, and the good ones deserve the money they get. I like to teach business owners how they can capitalize on using the media to their advantage. One such client is Intervention Services Inc. Mike Loverde landed a huge interview on CNN just after the Michael Jackson story. I have written a product that teaches people how to get on the Six O’Clock News.

The point here is that Mike took action on this “PR Test,” and it worked. He now not only has more traffic coming to his site and more inquiries but he now has a video he can share and reuse for new clients. The only cost of the “test” were his fees to me and his time which were small. The name of the game is to “test” for as small of an investment as possible and roll out when the test works and do more of it.

In another client situation my customer has an electronic sound machine. It is like a clock radio but also with sounds of sea gulls, a running river, chimes etc. He has found success in selling these products in big box stores, however his margins are much better in a direct sale environment. One area he has had success is in the hospital market. He has found that he is able to get multiple orders in hospitals. What I have recommended to him in starting to exploit this market is to test some advertising in newsletters that go to the buyers in hospitals. Again we have to find a newsletter(s) that won’t cost an arm and a leg (hopefully less than $500) with reasonable reach and see if it works. In the mean time we will be making a new landing page for this specific audience. it might sound like a lot of work but in actuality it only takes about a week to put these together.

In another healthcare related situation I received an e-mail today from a Drug Treatment Center asking my opinion of his videos. (I’m a HUGE believer in Video SEO as a matter of fact I am building a business around it to distribute online videos). But my question back to this prospective client was: “How many phone calls did you get from them?” And his response was: Good Question. I’m not sure what it took to produce the videos but they looked like they were well produced and professional, however, they were missing a lot of things. They were not tagged correctly, I only saw them on one video network, there was no call to action etc. So the point here is I commend this person for venturing out into video and testing it. He might have been better served hiring someone like me before producing and distributing them.

A bigger point to all of this is that testing is an investment. If this is true, then we want to maximize our investment as much as possible and stack the deck in our favor and give ourselves an unfair competitive advantage when we test. Too many failed tests cost a lot of money and it doesn’t have to be that way. One of the advantages my clients have is using my experience and many failed tests in learning what NOT to do. Here is one of my favorite quotes:

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” Red Adair

Save yourself a lot of time and money, hire someone with experience and results in their given field, it should serve you well.

Basically Google cares about 2 things in the SEO game:

1. Writing great content

2. And quality inbound links to your site

Having been on the Internet since the mid 1990’s I’ve seen a lot of stuff come and go. As soon as something gets hot i.e. Facebook or Twitter a lot of people seem to try and capitalize on the traffic and the opportunity which only makes sense in a free market economy.

SEO is hot and has been hot for a few years now. It should continue to stay hot.

Lately I’ve been helping clients with their overall web strategy which can include product positioning, SEO, PPC, video SEO, offline lead generation and several other tactics. At the end of the day none of these tactics are hidden secrets but you do want to know what you are doing before you are about to dump a lot of money into them. Test then track.

Having spent some time in the DRTV media buying space I learned something that they were using that crosses over to the Internet space. It is called MER or media efficiency ratio. What MER is, is media spend to revenue ratio. For example, if I spend $100 on Google PPC Adwords and I generate $1,000 in product sales from my PPC efforts we would call that a 10:1 MER or just simply a 10:1 ratio. This is simple economics. Make more than you spend. (10:1 would be amazingly great in the DRTV world).

So why is there a problem with SEO? The barrier to entry is basically nonexistent. The problem is that anyone can get into the SEO business or industry and call themselves an expert. (So this means anything goes if you are not careful). What this means is that your web developer might tell you that they will get you ranked on Google. OK, we are excited right? Not so fast. If I’m in the drug treatment business and am selling residential drug treatment to drug addicts you would think that the keyword phrase “drug rehab” would be great to rank for? Not necessarily.

Why the traffic from “drug rehab” might be desirable, it is not the “right traffic.” If I’m a drug treatment center in Chicago then “drug rehab + Chicago” will be a much better fit. Location based has a much higher chance for conversion, in this particular example let’s say a web lead or a phone call. I can go into all the different permutations on why this is so but what really needs to be looked at is the keyword research. First, you need to think about the clients you want to attract and then use the keywords (language) that they use to search on.

Too many times I have seen clients get ranked for keyword phrases that no one is searching on. (This means that there was no understanding of keyword research). That is sort of like opening up a hamburger stand in the desert with no road coming into or out of the hamburger joint. Kind of like opening the hamburger joint on a busy corner or a back alley. A little bit of keyword research can solve this problem and I teach clients how to do it for themselves. It typically takes 2-4 hours. Or I can “do it for them.”

The problem with SEO is that too many times I have clients come to me and tell me that their SEO guy is not delivering, the phone is not ringing or the leads and orders are not coming in. SEO is not the only game in town, it is one of many tools. The first question I ask is please give me “read only access” to your analytics reports. When I get an answer like “what is that?” I know they have been taken for a ride. The reason analytics is so important is we want to see where the clients are converting on both the paid and the SEO side of their web traffic and how they are using the site and how they are coming into the site.

I can also tell right away how they are doing by looking at how Google sees their top ranked natural SEO keywords. If their company name is 8 out of their top 10 in their natural SEO results then they have major problems. The deal is you want to rank for generic category keyword phrases like blue suede shoes.

In a recent case last week we discovered that the “SEO Company” was sending links out to the clients’ competition among other things. This was a blatant form of either stupidity or carelessness. I don’t think that they were offering any real link value in those out bound links but why send someone off your page? Get them to call you first then you can determine if you can refer them, not unless you get so many calls where they are a nuisance. These guys were so deceptive that they then offered to open another web site and control the DNS and the Web hosting. When the relationship ended with the client they held the site hostage, but it didn’t matter since it only had 1,600 inlinks and a 0 page rank….and it was generating no leads for the client.

The other point about SEO is inbound links. The more you have and the more relevant to your business the higher your page rank will go as well as your search results pages on Google. To see how many links your web site has coming in go to your Google tool bar and hit the back links button or use this better tool from Yahoo called Site Explorer and “explore your URL.”

If you have a question if your SEO Company or technical team is doing their SEO right visit Speechrep Consulting or call me at 781-631-9691 or send me e-mail and I can basically tell you in a matter of minutes, no charge, if what you are doing is on the right path. Sometimes some fixes are simple. Other times the fix requires breaking of contracts.

How CEO’s Can Play in the SEO & Social Media Sandbox, by Jim Peake

Leveraging Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media (SM) is something that everyone at a business can participate in. There is a hidden and vitally important role that an executive (CEO/CXO) can play in the SEO game. Because executives often have higher level relationships with other organizations they can carry influence. The way to use this influence is to ask your partners and customers for their “web links also known as backlinks” from their web sites pointing back to your web site.

Without going into a long drawn out dissertation on SEO there are two things that executives need to know about SEO.

1) Get organic links from other authority sites (ask for them)

2) Write great original content

CEO’s tend to be in the “deal flow” often. If a customer is driving a hard bargain on a negotiated deal and you know you can give them what they want, tell them they can have it but they have to give you a link from their homepage to your web site in return for this great deal. In some cases this can be of huge value. (They might not give you the link but you can command your higher price). Having relevant incoming links can be of huge value for a few reasons:

1) send qualified traffic from their site to your site (potential leads and/or paying customers)

2) the home page link is where many of their incoming links are going to which carries more weight in the SEO world

3) check the page rank of the customer link on their home page, if it is a PR 3 or higher you are adding valuable linkage to your site (a PR 7 and above is fantastic)

4) if you do business with the government or education markets ask for .gov and .edu domain links because they typically can carry the higher page ranks

Your web team will be really happy to see that you are helping them get more high quality relevant inks. Links are like money in the bank, literally. Take a look at this Businessweek web site and see how many links they have coming in.

The point here is that Businessweek.com has over 2.5 million incoming links from other web sites. The more links you have the more opportunity you have not only of getting traffic but also of ranking higher in the SERP Pages (Search Engine Results Page = more clicks on your web site).

In Businessweek’s case they have incoming links with a PR-8 Rank from RefDesk and CEO Express. This is excellent when you can get these types of home page links coming in. These sites not only have a lot of traffic but they cater to the same CEO’s and executives as Businessweek does, hence these are relevant links and Google loves relevant links coming into your site. Google and Yahoo provide high marks for these links. The high marks turn into high search results pages.

Now I don’t expect CEO’s to start writing copy for web sites any time soon unless they are with a small business and are also the product manager who wants to make sure the information is accurate. This is something just to keep in mind and it is a continual process and you want to keep adding more high quality relevant content to your web site.

How might an executive play in the social media space?

Start by getting a LinkedIn profile. If you already have a LinkedIn profile make sure you encourage everyone in your organization to link to you. You will be amazed at how valuable and profitable their information is in customer feedback and product development if you allow them the access.

LinkedIn Two things to do to get started on LinkedIn:

1) Tell people you are on LinkedIn put it in your bio on the web site, people will want to link to you because you are a leader

2) There is an “Answers section” on LinkedIn. Answer 1 question per month and you will be amazed at some of the people you will meet there. Keep those conversations going, give your knowledge away, and it will pay back handsome dividends

There are plenty of business applications for using Facebook, but my recommendation is that if you are going to go “social media” go Twitter instead. Twitter is a personal news service that allows short messages to be delivered in real time through the web or mobile devices. It will take too long to explain Twitter in detail for this article but you can follow me and ask me how to use Twitter by going to http://twitter.com/JimPeake. On a quick side note Twitter is the perfect place to do market research and customer surveys and get answers back on the same day even within the same hour. Doing this alone can save millions in some cases.

Are you a thought leader? Have you heard about people developing their own personal brands? If you want to make a statement to the business community and you are serious about getting into this social media game, get a “professional blog.” Hire a professional to develop a blog for you. Yes, you can get a blog for free but you will not be putting your best foot forward, and it will show. I hired experts to build and design my blog on http://speechrep.com so that I could present a professional image. I’m not so concerned about “selling” on my blog as I am about allowing people to get to know me and making an environment where they will pick up the phone to call for more information. My blog is constantly evolving with content and functionality.

Think of your blog a front porch to your house, people can swing by and say high but they don’t actually have to come into the house. Directing them to your business web site is like inviting them into your living room or home office, that is where transactions occur. Having a professional blog allows familiarity to exist, people do business with people they know like and trust, and since people like to get to know you before they do business with you a well written blog is a great way to accomplish this.

Be a thought leader and write on your blog your opinions of other articles and papers. 2-4 times per month of this type of writing is enough, 2-3 times per week is excellent, but who has the time? Allow others to comment on your blog posts. Two C-Suite bloggers are Bill Marriott and Fred Wilson.

If there is only one thing you need to remember, write the copy yourself, be yourself and be authentic. If you don’t, you can and will be exposed. It is ok to have others “review” for you but make sure the words are your words and not those of a PR person.

In wrapping up, make sure you comment on others blogs and leave a link back to your site or to your blog, it will help your SEO efforts over time.

Jim Peake is an Internet Marketing Consultant with SpeechRep Consulting in Marblehead, MA who brings products and companies to market using the holistic approach in marketing PR, SEO, PPC, Video, Social Media and offline methods. http://speechrep.com